At best, baffling.........

from Helen

Have you ever had one of those moments when you are watching a debate and someone scores an own goal ? You know the kind of situation when it is obvious who is winning the debate and then they go and say something silly. Or, when you make a comment – and this has happened to me a lot, and someone comments, ‘There are so many ways to tease you for that comment you have left yourself wide open …” 

I think we have all been in the situation when we put our foot right in it. There was once time when we had  friends over for a meal and, I have to admit I cheated and bought ready made lasagne from Marks and Spencer. The table looked great with the lasagne from Marks, rocket salad from Marks, Italian bread from Marks and the husband of the couple congratulated me on my hard work. The wife laughed and said, “It’s no problem Marks and Spencer did it all.” I was amazed how did she know? I asked - and her response was, it used to be an advert on the TV for Marks and Spencers food. She assumed that I had made the food, I assumed that she had worked out my secret and in the end we both felt silly !

I was thinking about that moment when I read the gospel reading for today (Mark 8:31-38). It was another of those …oh poor Peter.. moments. Those moments when Peter full of emotion and passion refuses to believe that Jesus would suffer. Peter couldn’t believe that Jesus  - the King could suffer. He had trust and faith in God that must have seemed a little misguided at this point.

Peter had followed Jesus, trusted Him and saw Him as the future with all the good news that this would entail. He saw Jesus as the one who could make a difference. Peter would have known of the promise that God had made to King David in the Old Testament that there would be a royal line out of which would come the Messiah the Anointed one. 

For Peter and others at this time this meant that God would send an almighty warrior to bring a change and defeat the Romans, the people who occupied Israel. He would have seen Jesus as this King, the one in charge the one who could never be defeated. To hear Jesus talking of His impending suffering, death and resurrection must have been at best baffling and at worst absolutely ridiculous. 

In our Old Testament reading (Gen. 17:1-7, 15-16) we heard of another baffling situation. Abram and Sarai were really not expecting to have a baby. Abram was 99 years old. In the passage we heard Abram being given a promise by God that at best must have seemed baffling and at worst absolutely ridiculous. 

God made a promise to Abraham. For the people in the time of Jesus they could remember that God had made a promise to save people and to be honest this promise of a new king had been misunderstood. The answer was that in Jesus all these promises were becoming very real

Abraham and Sarah did have a child. A whole nation came from Abraham.  

Jesus did suffer, He did die and He did rise again in three days. What could have seemed at best baffling and at worst ridiculous was real and amazing. 

God had made a promise and He wasn’t going to let people down. In the gospel reading Peter missed the point, he didn’t realise that following Jesus was going to mean suffering. He didn’t realise that it’s not always easy to be a disciple. 

Peter could have thought that being a disciple, a follower of Jesus was rather amazing and not that difficult but of course this was not to be the case.

Being a follower means being like someone, it means mimicking them, it means copying them. The disciples that Jesus had give us confidence that we don’t need to be perfect. They give us confidence that whilst it is not always easy to follow Jesus and to be like Him we are always to stand against anything that makes us stop trying to be like God and doing what He would have us do. 

To be a disciple does mean to take up our cross. It means us wanting to draw closer to God even if that means going against the norm. It means being prepared to do things a bit differently, it means not getting comfortable with who we are but being prepared to make changes in our lives even if it makes us a bit uncomfortable. It means praying more, it means spending more time reading our Bibles, it means being as Jesus to all those we meet, it means being ready to invite people to join us as we worship, it means being prepared to greet people with the wonderful news that no matter what else is happening in the world God loves them. 

At times to be a disciple may seem at best baffling or at worst ridiculous but it is always the best way to be. This is because it is the way we were created, to be in a relationship with God. 

In the last week we have heard of the death of the great evangelist Billy Graham who didn’t want to do anything except tell people that God loved them. He said” “I am convinced the greatest act of love we can ever perform for people is to tell them about God’s love in Christ.”

This is amazing this is what our discipleship should be about. We have the bestnews so lets share it. But let us be prepared to change to be more like the one we follow day by day. I want to finish with another quote from Billy Graham. 

He said, 

"Being a Christian is more than just an instantaneous conversion - it is a daily process whereby you grow to be more and more like Christ." — Billy Graham  

May we always seek to draw closer and closer to Christ no matter how hard it might be. AMEN